One of the big stories this political season is the unusually large number of Oregon voters who changed their registration to participate in the hotly contested May 20 Democratic primary between Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama—including several thousand in Multnomah County.
But now Secretary of State Bill Bradbury, the state’s top elections official, says that making sure those new voters’ ballots get counted will be a challenge.
Many of those who switched from other parties or from non-affiliated status to join the Democrats did so after county elections officials had already sent their voter lists to the printer. So those late-switchers may get a ballot reflecting their original registration and, later, a second ballot reflecting their new status as registered Dems. Only one ballot per person will be counted.
But here’s the kicker: because recent changers will get their invalid ballots first, they may send them without realizing their Democratic ballots are on the way.
Kevin Looper, the director of Our Oregon, an advocacy group that studies voting patterns, says elections officials should have been better prepared, given that the wave of newly registered Democrats is a national phenomenon easily observed in states that have already held their primaries.
Looper says the screw-up could hurt Obama, the presidential candidate who many voters are presumably switching to vote for. And it also could penalize candidates farther down the ticket who might otherwise ride on Obama’s lengthy coat-tails.
“The first impact will be a lot of confusion,” Looper says. “The second will be that some people will fill out the wrong ballot and not realize it. Other voters won’t necessarily know the second ballot is coming and may even be afraid to send it in. So, overall there will be fewer votes on the presidential primary and on down-ballot races. This will impact tens of thousands of people statewide. Part of the problem is that elections officials can’t accurately define the numbers. We estimate between five and seven thousand people in Multnomah county alone could be affected. Many legislative primaries get decided by 50 to 250 votes. You just hate to have any question at all about the administration of the election effecting the outcome of the election.”
Here’s a press release issued this afternoon by Bradbury’s spokesman, Scott Moore, that explains how we got here and what voters should do:
“Due to the extraordinarily high number of Oregon voters who’ve recently changed their political party affiliation, there will likely be a number of voters who will receive two ballots for the May 20 primary.
This affects only those voters who’ve changed their party registration (from one party to another, or from non-affiliated to a party) in the last week to two weeks. When ballots are mailed May 2, some voters will first receive a ballot with their previous registration. These ballots should not be voted.
Instead, affected voters should wait until their new, updated ballot arrives, and then vote only that ballot. The outdated, incorrect ballots should then be destroyed. This situation will not affect voters who have registered for the first time, only those who’ve recently reregistered with a different party.
Note: Even if two ballots are cast by the same voter, only one ballot–the updated one with the new party affiliation–will be counted. For more explanation on this, see below.
Important questions:
What caused this scenario? In order to prepare and mail out more than 2 million ballots on time, county elections offices begin preparing their ballots up to two weeks in advance of the mailing date. If a voter changed their registration after that date, they’ll receive the one that has already been prepared for them, followed by a new ballot reflecting their party change. This happens in every election, but it’s never before impacted so many voters.
How many people are affected? It varies from county to county, depending on when county officials started preparing their ballots, but the statewide number will be in the thousands. Note: Numerous counties have been able to pull some or all of their affected ballots.
What happens if a voter casts the ballot that has their old registration? The state’s centralized database will catch the error automatically (the ballot envelope bar code contains the voter’s ID and ballot style), and that ballot will not be processed. Instead, it will be set aside until all other ballots are processed. If the second, updated ballot is cast, only that one will be counted, and the old one will not be counted. If the voter sends in only the out-of-date ballot, only their votes in non-partisan contests will be counted. Again, under any circumstance, only one ballot will be counted per voter.
For reference, this process is laid out in the Vote By Mail Procedures Manual, which can be found on the Oregon Elections Division’s website.”
Our Oregon’s Looper tells WWire that the Secretary of State’s explanation is insufficient:
“This is not a problem that gets solved with a press release,” he says. “Elections officials should communicate the issue directly to individual voters, many of whom will naturally be confused or upset when their ballot doesn’t include a chance to vote in the presidential primary. They should mail information to impacted voters directly in advance of sending out their ballots, rather than waiting for the problem to unfold. This should be done uniformly across the state rather than differently by county.”
UPDATE Moore says that every voter who may be getting two ballots will also receive a written communication from the Secretary of State’s office explaining the duplication and instructing the voter on what to do.
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MY FELLOW "BITTER", STUPID, WORKING CLASS PEOPLE
If you think like Barack Obama, that WORKING CLASS PEOPLE are just a bunch of "BITTER"!, STUPID, PEASANTS, Cash COWS!, and CANNON FODDER.
You Might Be An Idiot!
If you think Barack Obama with little or no experience would be better than Hillary Clinton with 35 years experience.
You Might Be An Idiot!
If you think that Obama with no experience can fix an economy on the verge of collapse better than Hillary Clinton. Whose
husband (Bill Clinton) led the greatest economic expansion, and prosperity in American history.
You Might Be An Idiot!
If you think that Obama with no experience fighting for universal health care can get it for you better than Hillary Clinton. Who anticipated this current health care crisis back in 1993, and fought a pitched battle against overwhelming odds to get universal health care for all the American people.
You Might Be An Idiot!
If you think that Obama with no experience can manage, and get us out of two wars better than Hillary Clinton. Whose
husband (Bill Clinton) went to war only when he was convinced that he absolutely had to. Then completed the mission in record time against a nuclear power. AND DID NOT LOSE THE LIFE OF A SINGLE AMERICAN SOLDIER. NOT ONE!
You Might Be An Idiot!
If you think that Obama with no experience saving the environment is better than Hillary Clinton. Whose
husband (Bill Clinton) left office with the greatest amount of environmental cleanup, and protections in American history.
You Might Be An Idiot!
If you think that Obama with little or no education experience is better than Hillary Clinton. Whose
husband (Bill Clinton) made higher education affordable for every American. And created higher job demand and starting salary
douchebag much??
Thanks for the correction, Nigel, and here’s some more information just to set the record even more straight:
Every affected voter will receive a postcard in the mail explaining why they are getting two ballots and what they should do. Multiple counties–including Multnomah–are also sending inserts in the second ballots that explain the situation as well.
The most important thing for the Secretary of State’s office is for the correct information to reach all of the voters who are affected, so that there isn’t any confusion.
If anyone is still confused, they should call their county elections office or the Oregon voter hotline at 866-ORE-VOTE. Yes, that’s the correct number.
Scott Moore
Oregon Secretary of State’s Office
If you think that being first lady for eight years gives you experience.
You are an idiot.
If you think failing miserably to fix the problem of health care before somehow makes you more able the second time around.
You are an idiot.
If you have to mention "her husband Bill Clinton" in every paragraph in order to somehow give her success by association.
You are an idiot.
If you make bizarre, irrational, and absurd accusations about Senator Obama’s fundraising, all the while butchering the english language.
You are an idiot.
If you… oh, forget about it.
You are an idiot.
Thank you, jacksmith, for your insightful comments about the actions of our election officials that have the potential to disenfranchise thousands of Oregon voters. I’m sure that with the support of civic-minded supporters like you, your candidate is sure to win the contest in Oregon because clearly you have a firm grasp on the issues that ensure a fair and free vote in the State of Oregon.
I have a rant, too. But, I’ll limit mine to the frustrations I have with the election process and not the political campaign. I remember the days when the two were more distinctly separate. We now continue to deal with fallout of a political agenda that was presented to the good people of Oregon as a way to increase voter turnout and save money. An exclusive vote-by-mail election does neither, but don’t let this latest revelation get in the way of the truth. If we continue to promote Oregon’s experiment of a mandated all absentee ballot election as a model for the rest of the country, in the end we may as well just let the judiciary decide the results of all our elections because our rights to free and fair elections will have vanished just as surely as have the polling places in Oregon.
I worked for Multnomah County Elections during the transition to an all vote-by-mail system. I witnessed voter fraud that went unreported because of the push by elections officials to eliminate polling place elections. I heard the ad-nauseam arguments that vote-by-mail would decrease costs and increase turnout. Most of the media in Oregon bought the arguments hook line and sinker because they wanted instant election results and believed that an all vote-by-mail system would accomplish that goal. Coupled with the turnout and cost arguments the media eventually convinced Oregonians that vote-by-mail was an innovative and civics positive system that couldn’t be denied to the voters in Oregon.
The truth is that many counties in Oregon had to retool or replace counting equipment to accommodate an all mail ballot. We pay a poll tax every time we mail in our ballots even though we’ve already paid in full for our elections with our property taxes. Some people argue that if Iraqis can dodge bullets to vote, why do some of us continue to insist that our ballot return envelopes be postage paid to ensure everyone has the same ability to cast their ballots. What a ridiculous argument! This is not Iraq and we’ve already paid price enough through 200+ years of history for the right to fair and free elections in this country. If even one ballot is left on someones dining room table because they didn’t have a stamp, or the right stamps, or a ready recall of the locations of the ballot drop off sites, they’ve been disenfranchised.
Polling place elections weren’t perfect, but they were secure and ensured a higher degree of integrity against voter fraud. In the polling place elections I supervised we didn’t receive ballots smeared with body excrements; I can’t say the same for the vote-by-mail elections I supervised. There were no rare stamps affixed to envelopes of little old lady voters that were later removed and converted into the hands of election workers. If someone traveled from precinct to precinct in the hopes of voting more than once for a candidate, or issue, we knew our precincts and the electorate therein and prevented large scale voter fraud. When ballots land in the mailboxes of voters who have moved and the stray ballot can be converted to nefarious purposes, or there is an abusive person in the household voting your ballot for you, or you take your ballot to church with you to be guided by your pastor on how to vote, the integrity of the elections process is sullied.
We had a sense of community when we had polling place elections, we’re now pawns to the bureaucracy and the latest defects revealed in this report convince me more deeply that we’ve given up one more of our rights for the sake of state-sponsored technocracy. Were we to truly have our Primary Election on May 20th in polling places, this latest "snafu" would never have happened.
Oregon’s former Secretary of State Phil Kiesling was loathe to debate the real cost to taxpayers of his pet project that eliminated polling place elections. He had his eye on a U.S. Senate run and vote-by-mail would be the vehicle that propelled him to his higher aspirations. However, his political career crashed for still fully unexplained reasons. He resigned his office "to spend more time with his family." The only reason I mention Kiesling’s relationship to the current debacle is because every time he had an opportunity to ensure the integrity and fairness of vote-by-mail elections, he would dodge the issues and repeat his arguments that an all absentee election system would increase turnout and lower costs. He would not consider a postage-paid ballot return envelope, even though the US Postal Service said they would discount the postage rate. He would not consider a mix of polling place and vote-by-mail elections. He would not address the potential for fraud, intimidation, or other potential defects of an all vote-by-mail system. He would cite various election laws as sacrosanct as long as they fit into his agenda and deny the ones that pointed out the potential flaws of his scheme. And even a PolySci neophyte knows that turnout is influenced more by the issues and candidates than by mailboxes. We continue to live with Phil Kiesling’s legacy of vote-by-mail and he didn’t even get his coveted U.S. Senate seat.
When will the fine people of Oregon finally hear the wake up call that an exclusive vote-by-mail is a system rife with the potential for fraud, cost overruns and the disenfranchisement of hundreds, if not thousands of Oregon voters? Is there a lawyer in the house that will at long last sue to protect our voting rights in Oregon?
I agree with your sentiment TMPDX. The fact that we have to vote by mail is disenfranchising. I miss the days of polling place pride. The look we gave each other as we passed just having pulled the handle (punch the ballot). I just received my non-partisan ballot in the mail. I have no one to complain to on the spot. The kitchen table is a sad spot to be alone at on "get out and vote" day.
Those of us who registered as "none of the above" (existing two major parties) didn’t even get a place on the ballot to write-in a candidate for President